Whoever is responsible for coming up with the idea that the best time slot to schedule the Top 14 “Match of the Round” is 9.10pm on Sunday nights should get a pay rise.
In another example of the French paradox, late Sunday night rugby has proved to be hugely popular with the rugby community attending in droves and TV audiences tuning in.
Last Sunday the Toulouse Football stadium was packed with 33,000 supporters who witnessed Antoine Dupont deliver a supreme attacking performance against a Bordeaux team that, like the rest of us, were awed by the Pocket Rocket’s staggering brilliance.
Weaving, jinking, stepping and even pirouetting, his mesmeric running game created gaps in the Bordeaux defensive line that simply did not exist. His final electric sprint from a lineout set piece, enabled him to score the match-defining try.
When Toulouse coach Ugo Mola called his prince back into the safety of the dugout and Dupont was departing his canvas where he had created his supreme exhibition of rugby artistry, he received the standing ovation he deserved.
Twenty-four hours earlier, Ronan O’Gara and La Rochelle had arrived at the Velodrome in Marseille, almost a year to the day since they triumphed in the Champions Cup on that famous ground. Toulon had taken the match to the giant stadium hoping to cash in on the box office power that O’Gara has created with his team.
While 9.10pm on Saturday night may seem another counterintuitive scheduling for such a huge match, 42,000 paying bums on seats tells you that club rugby in France is, as we say in Australia, “going gangbusters”.
Ronan O’Gara has done a masterful job sculpting the Rochelais into the most complete team in Europe. While capable of scoring long-range tries or grinding points out at close quarters, O’Gara’s “Magnum opus” has been forging La Rochelle into the most dominant club team in the world at the breakdown.
The jackelling skills of their brilliant number eight Gregory Alldritt and hooker Pierre Bourgarit are equal to any on the planet.
It is not only back-to-back Champions Cup wins that has La Rochelle transfixed. They have a detailed plan on how to lift the holy grail of French rugby, the symbol of Top 14 supremacy, the Bouclier de Brennus.
While La Rochelle’s attack leads the Top 14 by scoring 628 points, it is the brilliance of their Atlantic Wall-type defence that is little mentioned but has underpinned their success.
The French season is a marathon of seemingly endlessly physical matches, so Ronan O’Gara is accurate in saying that the long path La Rochelle have been forced to navigate to the Champions Cup final has been more difficult to negotiate than Leinster across the URC
In conceding only 427 points, by far the least in the Top 14, O’Gara is proving the coaching mantra that defence wins Championships.
With two rounds remaining their season of excellence has guaranteed them a minimum second-place finish in the French championship. Crucially, this not only provides La Rochelle with a week off in the first round of their playoff matches but this also means that until the Top 14 Final, they will avoid their only true threat for the title, which is the brilliance of Antoine Dupont and Toulouse.
The French season is a marathon of seemingly endlessly physical matches, so Ronan O’Gara is accurate in saying that the long path La Rochelle have been forced to navigate to the Champions Cup final has been more difficult to negotiate than Leinster across the URC.
However, the scheduling that has forced Leinster to compete in a Champions Cup quarter-final, a URC quarter-final, then URC semi-final, in the three weekends prior to the Champions Cup final, with potentially the URC final to follow, is an outrageously tough five weeks of games by any measure. A Leinster double appears to be as close to impossible as it gets in rugby.
While La Rochelle did not fire on all cylinders last Saturday night, it was more than enough to dispose of Toulon.
That win and La Rochelle’s staggering 201 points differential, means O’Gara can rest his stars as he travels away to play against Montpellier while cheering on Munster from afar.
At stages during this season Munster, the province that nurtured O’Gara’s greatness, have looked in tatters. To have regrouped and fought to reach a URC semi-final from the depths of the significant problems they faced earlier in the season is to be commended.
The vagaries of the combined competition schedules have the final 14 days before the Champions Cup final leaning to the advantage of La Rochelle
A week prior to the Champions Cup final, Leinster would have preferred to face anyone but Munster. When Munster and Leinster meet you can guarantee an emotionally driven physical confrontation.
While screaming off-key renditions of Zombie, the Red Army are dreaming of spoiling the Leinster party while considering the fringe benefit of softening up the men in blue for one of their favourite sons from Cork a week later.
The vagaries of the combined competition schedules have the final 14 days before the Champions Cup final leaning to the advantage of La Rochelle. We will not be able to fully calculate how strong that advantage is for Les Maritimes until after full-time at the Aviva on Saturday.
Yet, at home in their fortress that is the Aviva, Leinster remain a beast of a team. While La Rochelle are Europe’s best with almost zero weaknesses, if Leinster can down Munster, which they should, while sustaining minimal injuries and knowing that they have the powerful aura of the Aviva to help in their two “home” finals, then, however unlikely, Leinster can still dream.
Knowing that his beloved red team will be doing all in their power to spoil Leinster’s party is money in the bank towards Ronan O’Gara and La Rochelle achieving their goal of the French double. All of it at Leinster’s expense and Munster’s gain.
After all, you can take the boy out of Cork, but you can’t take Cork out of the boy.
